Thursday, January 27, 2011

With the exception of turning around, walking away, and pretending I don’t love you, writing a book is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I devote pretty much every hour of the day to writing the thing and as of right now I’ve only made a small dent in the final product. The main problem is that I’m a perfectionist who reads through everything I write a thousand times to make sure I don’t mispell anything or have any tyops, which means it sometimes takes me hours to write a single paragraph. But another big problem I’ve run into is that I can’t really make jokes about current events since the Trillion Man March won’t understand the references/they won’t be nearly as effective when the book comes out in a year. For example, I can make a joke on my blog about Rashard Mendenhall dry-humping an accused rapist on national television, but I can’t put it in my book because it will be a completely irrelevant story in a year. And of course, the last problem I’m having is the inability to link to awesome YouTubes in my book, which is something that makes up about 50% of my blog and 100% of the interesting parts of my blog. I was under the impression that the book would be just as easy to write as the blog, but that was before I realized that it’s a completely different process that’s much more challenging and unlike anything I’ve done before. Anyway, the point is that writing a book is more tedious and mentally draining than my first marriage.

This is why I’ve decided to put the blog on the backburner for awhile. The way I see it, I can either stop doing my blog to focus on my book now, or I can ignore my book and realize six months from now that I’m screwed as a scramble to finish it (Before you ask, no, I’m not capable of writing both at the same time. I’m a terrible at multitasking and I’m terrible at writing, so doing something that involves both doesn’t seem like a very good idea). I know that the TMM isn’t thrilled with my decision, but I really do think it’s better than the alternative. Besides, when my book comes out and you all buy at least ten copies (in the words of Latrell Spreewell, I’ve got a family to feed), this will be water under the bridge. By then you’ll all be mad at me for talking about pubes too much or using the word “poopdick” too much in my book and you’ll completely forget about the time I didn’t write my blog for months.

In the meantime, if you really are desperate to swim with The Shark and can’t fathom a life without my off-base and ignorant thoughts (judging from the bombardment of “what the hell happened to you” emails, many of you apparently are for whatever reason), you do have some options. First of all, you can follow me on Twitter, where I routinely make fun of Daequan Cook and then get disappointed that nobody finds him as hilariously awesome as I do. Yeah, I know – “Twitter is gay and is only for people with self-confidence issues who can’t figure out that nobody cares they’re having a muffin for breakfast.” I can’t say I fully disagree. But if you actually checked Twitter out you’d realize that as long as you don’t follow professional athletes, celebrities, or 16-year-old girls, you’ll most likely never see a dumb tweet about what someone is having for breakfast. #jussayin

The other option that you’ll have pretty soon (within the next month for sure) is the SharkWolf podcast that I’m starting with my BFF Andy Keller, who calls himself The Electric Wolf (yeah it’s a terrible nickname, but just go with it – you’ll hurt his feelings if you tell him how badly it sucks). I can only imagine what’s going through some of your minds as you read that sentence so I figured I should just list what you’re thinking and address your thoughts right now.

Didn’t you already have a podcast? And didn’t it kind of suck?Yes I did and yes it did. The biggest difference between my old podcast and the SharkWolf podcast is that I really just don’t give a s*** this time around. With the old podcast, I tried too hard to be professional and not piss off the higher-ups at Ohio State, which ultimately made me kind of bland and uninteresting. For the most part, the SharkWolf podcast will never have guests and will instead just be Keller and me discussing things like the strange hypothetical situations we always come up with (and probably tons of “would you rather…”). Since I do this with him everyday anyway, it will be a lot more natural for me and won’t result in me trying way too hard to conduct an interesting interview with a guest and failing miserably.

You’re turning into Simmons.I see your point, but I promise you that I won’t end up being Simmons 2.0. The truth is that I really don’t care about sports all that much, which is the primary reason why I want nothing to do with sportswriting. My proof is that I dabbled in college basketball writing for ESPN a little bit, but I really wasn’t feeling it so I stopped. I know it puts me in the minority, but sports are enjoyable for me only when I’m watching the actual games. All the arguing and banter that goes on in between the games is exhausting and completely pointless to me. It’s occasionally entertaining to watch other people do it (and argue about sports LOL), but I don’t really want to be a part of it.

Yeah, but you’re still turning into Simmons. He took time off to write his book and now he podcasts more than he writes.I don’t know what to tell you. It just makes sense to do it that way. I’m not a good enough writer and there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to consistently write two different things. Podcasting is a good way to let the Trillion Man March inside my brain without having to take huge chunks of time away from writing my book. It makes sense and you know it. As always, if you don’t like it, you can suck it.

Podcasts suck. I don’t have an hour and a half to take out of my life to listen to you talk.Like you, my pet peeve with podcasts is that they are always way too long. This is why the SharkWolf podcast will aim for 30 minutes every time. After all, you people have lives, and even if you don’t, your video games aren’t going to play themselves. We might go over 30 minutes every now and then, but that’s the goal. Just like I’ve told every girl I’ve ever dated: If you want longer, there are plenty of other options.

So there it is. Follow my ass on Twitter, listen to my ass on the SharkWolf podcast, or be SOL. Those are your options. If you have your heart set on only reading the blog, well I guess this is goodbye. For now. I’ll be back eventually, but maybe it’s best that we go on a little break and rekindle our love somewhere down the road. After all, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of the high school/college chicks I’m Facebook friends with, it’s that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Your awesome YouTube is the video that everyone keeps asking me about. Watch it first if you haven’t already and then meet me on the other side for my commentary.

The concept for a video like this is a good idea (I say this because I proposed a similar idea to some OSU higher-ups while I was there, but it got shot down because they’re all jealous douchers), but the execution was terrible. I don’t mean that the three guys blew it, because they made it as entertaining and funny as they possibly could have. I mean that the song choice was awful and having them just sit there and sing while reading the lyrics was another poor choice.

If I’m in charge of this thing, I get together five guys (three sitting down and two standing behind them) and have them sing “Tha Crossroads” by the Bone Thugs, but I don’t let them look at the lyrics. Since they all know how the song goes, but nobody actually knows the words, I’d have them sing with hardass looks on their face while they basically just mumble the words. I’d split the parts of the song up so that it mirrors the Bone Thug’s style of passing the baton and letting another guy take over the song every so often. After the inevitably hilarious “bow bow bow bow bone bow bone bone” intro, the rest of the video would fall into place and would be equally awesome. Just imagine Aaron Craft looking hard while mumbling about how tough ghetto life is, before letting Jon Diebler take over and struggle to tell us all about the homeys that he’s lost in the streets. I say throw in Sullinger and Lighty, who are both great at playing along and would bring some over the top comedy, and then round it out with Will Buford, who would take the thing dead seriously and would make it that much funnier because he probably knows all the words. That’s an F’ing video. It would’ve taken 30 minutes longer to film this thing than it did to film the Miley Cyrus one, but it would have definitely been worth it because my idea would have been much, much better. But alas, my suggestions always fall on deaf ears, which, interestingly enough, is exactly what I have after listening to those guys sing.

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